Mangas and Comics...

Been reading a lot of mangas and comics the past few months. Going back and forth between them. Sometimes mangas are nicer sometimes comics are nicer. Comics are more attractive in a way but then again holds so much dialogue and narrations sometimes. Makes me feel lose interest sometimes. Manga is a more straight to the point type of comic. Colorless but nevertheless more of a easy-reading material compared to comics. Anyhow as I was saying I have been going back and forth between them. Currently it's manga. Been reading lots of mangas, collecting them. During this process somehow I always find some that just sparks interest in me just from reading the first page. Some just made me sick. I guess I should give example. A while ago I have been quite crazy over a Korean manga or manhwa if you want to be technical. They are all the same. Just that manga in Korean is manhwa.


Anyhow the title was Shin Angyo Onshi or the English title, Blade of the Phantom Mask(sounds so corny). Very exciting characters, storyline was interesting and practically spark interest in me quite fast compared to others that I have read. Basically what I like it about it is that how they portray the hero in the story. The hero is not invincible he is more of a normal guy. Used to be a warrior but due to health factor later caused by a curse he is practically not those powerful heroes you see in normal comics but rather a fragile guy who often depends on luck and careful planning. What's funny is the curse makes his chest hurts when he is in a state of panic or have been using his body in extreme levels like running away and all. So to relief himself he carries around a breathing mechanism or I would say it rather looks like an inhaler for asthma Heh. Seriously it's like around the size of a whistle, maybe bigger and he takes a breathe on it once in a while. Looks and sounds like an inhaler to me. Which kind of make it cool I guess. Come on it's just illogical that every freaking hero is going to be rushing into enemies ala Neo in Matrix right? So he have to somehow compensate for his lack of strength right? Well he have two things up his sleeves, not literally. One is a skimpy clothes-wearing-butt-kicking-slayer girl with a giant metal claw on one hand and a sword on another. So cool. Any also his medallion. Now I don't want to translate it into Chinese/Korean cause it sounds like a bad word in Chinese actually HEH. The medallion is denoted by the number of horses cast into it given to them by the king. The more horses you have on it the higher the ranking is. In this case the hero had 3 (highest in the story is 4). So what he can do is from the medallion he can summon his army of phantom warriors. Which is kind of cool. The problem with lower ranking medallion is that for example the third one compared to a four horses medallion is that there are certain things that it doesn't kill or attack. Then again it's powerful enough.


Anyhow after googling around I found out that the story is actually based on a folktale whereby there is this bunch of government secret agents that goes around the city after city and disguise themselves as travelers to sniff out all those corrupt government officers. Sounds so familiar but I've heard of such stories in our own history textbook before but I don't remember the name. Back to the story, the medallion in the folktale of course don't summon phantom warriors and what not but rather it is a symbol of how many people or the size of the army under him. Which is kind of the more logical version of the manga itself.


All and all a good read. currently I don't get to read it since it has just recently finished and it's pretty hard to find people who translate it. Not very popular I guess.


This reminds me there is another manga I bump into the other day. One word describes it all. FREAKY. Not ghost or monster type of freaky. This is well the story is freaky and sick. So basically the title is Girlfriend. The story revolves around this couple of girls that ermm... in their own uncontrollable needs or their own interest or fetish maybe to actually do it with the guy character. Sick right? Of course it's not a hentai class manga so there is no detailed sex scenes or anything. An example of the story is there is this nerdy looking guy. He narrates that there is this girl in his school, very talented and popular and athletic and hot headed. No one would actually know they are together except both of them. The weird thing is the girl is just going for the sex and didn't want any relationship and all the stuff. Weird? Yeah it is! Stopped after the first chapter.


Amazing how many weird mangas are out there.